


all the songs we know

by stellatiate



Series: lazuli [5]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Older Woman/Younger Man
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-17
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2017-12-29 16:01:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1007333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellatiate/pseuds/stellatiate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Yes,” she says with a voice completely betraying what they’ve done, what they were <i>about</i> to do, “I do believe it is time for Prince Zuko to meet his match.”</p><p> </p><p>-—katara & zuko. au, age gap.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. —crushes hurt both ways

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iRockYourSocks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iRockYourSocks/gifts), [SongofHopeandHonor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SongofHopeandHonor/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you missed, we kissed. prince zuko finally meets his match, so to speak.

Zuko is nothing but fumbling strength and dazed, sunlit eyes as he sinks his nails into the smooth skin of her thighs and lifts her into his arms. Her mouth is unbearably hot in the crook of his neck, and the way her tongue lashes out against the cords of muscles in his throat threatens to tug at something that will collapse them into a pile on the floor.

Her door is the one that he reaches first, yanking the polished handle and slipping their bodies inside, and no sooner does he close the door behind them before he swivels her in his grip and shoves her back against the wall, his body only slightly jarred at the whimpering noise she makes against his jawline.

“I thought,” Katara starts, her voice hoarse and hollow as she hitches her legs further up on his hips, grates the warmth in the center of her thighs against his body, “I thought you’d last at least another week.”

For once, he’s grateful that his voice doesn’t stumble over words when he speaks. “How could I?” He slides his hands from her thighs to fasten against her hips and pull them closer, to subconsciously thrust himself into that warmth between her legs. And, _fuck_ , this is exactly how he imagined it being, except his heart never really quite raced this way, even in his awkwardly complete sensual dreams.

He could have never hoped to stave her off for another week, not with eyes like gentle waves fixed on him, not with enticingly smooth skin and tangled, silky hair and an intoxicating, alluring air she insisted on smothering him with. And Zuko is proud of the way his fingertips slide down the crease of her hips and into her wraps, because her thighs tremble and she nearly slides to the floor.

“Ahh,” she hisses, her hands gripping his forearms and her body canting to one side, squirming under his touch as if she wants to get away from the intensity of pleasure building a knot in the bottom of her stomach, and Zuko knows that look so well because it is always the one she wears with satisfaction, after their conversations, “don’t, _please_ don’t st—”

And Zuko could curse in several different worldly tongues for the sudden barrage of frantic knocks against her door.

Katara’s face wrenches painfully as she tries to touch her feet to the floor, but only pushes his fingers close to her and Zuko knows there is only a slip of wood between her and the person rapping on the other side of the door (and how she manages to keep her lips pursed only speaks to her finesse and stealth and grace).

Zuko watches her suck in a deep breath and his cheeks flush when she grips his face and kisses the breath out of him again, but catches him completely offguard when he opens the door and shoves him out of her room—and into Noriko’s grip.

“Your Highness,” she greets ambivalently, although her eyes rake over the disheveled Prince who stumbles out of the room, “I believe it is time for you to return Prince Zuko.”

Zuko huffs and straightens himself, and freezes when Katara speaks up. “Yes,” she says with a voice completely betraying what they’ve done, what they were _about_ to do, “I do believe it is time for Prince Zuko to meet his match.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for **socks** and **shannon** because lady loves!


	2. —on my worst behavior

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we've never been closer than this. whatever he has for her is getting so much worse.

“Tell me all about her.”

For all of the years spent mastering maturity and poise, the incensed expression on his face mirrors that of a child. Zuko closes the door behind himself, eyes fixed on where Katara sits with her back to him, blue robes pulled tight around her body, reflection cast in a vanity. She pulls a brush steadily through the tangles of her hair, slow motions with hands to smooth over the uncoiled curls, and it irritates him; no sliver of the woman who threatened to quake open against the polished door, not even a shadow of her desperately passionate pleas, _nothing_.

Maybe _that_ is what renders him in the likeness of a petulant, spoiled brat.

“She’s beautiful,” he says begrudgingly, and Katara laughs, because she can sense the reluctance in his voice. It had been a brief meeting, his parents wrapped in one another’s gentle embraces, his sister quiet but supportive at his side, and a girl not too much older than him standing with her own parents.

They spoke, but there wasn’t much to say, not with his mind racing to inappropriate thoughts, images of dark fingers skimming dark thighs, electric blue eyes lolling backwards under the short circuit of pleasure.

She was an enchanting young girl, waves of sandy brown hair and sideswept bangs and round, grey eyes. She spoke so animatedly of her family, her sisters who had their own prospects, of her excitement at being chosen— _I can’t believe I_ stood out _to the Fire Lord’s brother, Prince Ozai_ —and a brilliant smile that had jarred him from his thoughts.

But now, back in her presence, he _can’t_ stop thinking about it. About how he had been able to slip his fingers further inside of her, that throbbing, dripping warmth, about how he wanted to pull her hips back and forth until she ground herself raw against him, and how much pressure was _still_ pushing underneath his trousers.

Zuko groaned aloud.

“It wasn’t that bad, was it?” She asks, inclining her head slightly, brush caught in the snarl of curls, and she twists back around when she spots his hand clamped over his face. “She seemed like such a sweet girl when I met her a few days ago.”

He drags his hand down his face and stares at her back pointedly. “When did you…why did you meet her?” He’s met with silence, and after the first few seconds of it passes, he watches as she sets her brush down and stands up. There is something _wrong_ with him, this woman has spread some sort of deadly, deteriorating contagion in his mind, because he can’t think about anything else other than her.

The sway of her hips as she moves towards him is what catches his focus, and she sits down on the bed, legs pressed neatly together. “I meet a lot of people, Prince Zuko,” she says, flipping her hair over her shoulder, and he sinks into a seat beside her at the edge of the bed, “and I remember beautiful girls just as much as I remember handsome, enthusiastic boys.”

Every line of their body that touches catches fire underneath his skin.

“She is very beautiful,” he says with a measure of thought, but his body turns towards hers like he can’t help himself, like he doesn’t know any better, “but she’s no _you_.” Zuko rests his lips against her shoulder, over the smooth silk of her robe, and it is Katara who turns into his presence and overwhelms him with kisses.


	3. —all i do is dream of you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you're so wonderfully, wonderfully, wonderfully pretty. he learns her motives, her machinations, and more than he ever planned to learn.

“I never asked you,” Zuko starts one day, golden eyes twinkling with curiosity, “why you’re here in the first place?”

He’s taken up residence alongside her since she arrived in the Fire Nation Royal Palace, but Katara is always surrounded by this air of nonchalance, of absolute _freedom_ , and it wrings jealousy from every pore in his body.

Even now, she is brushing the tangles of her hair in front of her vanity, clad in nothing but an intricate design of chest wraps and pants that hem themselves around her calves. Zuko doesn’t think twice or three times about watching her as she moves, like he is trying to figure something complex out of the way her body works.

She gives pause for his question, turning her head over her shoulder, “I have business with your family, of course,” and watches his face for a reaction.

His face crumples with thought and he opens his mouth to ask another question, but her hand is up to silence him, so he simply resumes watching her with his fists under his chin, sprawled across the edge of her bed.

“When the time comes for you to know, Prince Zuko, I assure you that you will know.” She tosses her hair over her shoulder and twists in her seat to look at him, folding her fingers across her bare stomach.

It takes seconds, moments for her to cross the room, and then she is standing over him, forcing him to tilt his head back and stare up at her. “Until that time comes, I suggest you get out of my bed.” Her lips quirk and she props her hand on her hip. “I wouldn’t want you getting comfortable there.”

Zuko slides himself off of her bed slowly, grinning back at her as he stands and brushes the wrinkles out of his clothes. There is a seriousness to her voice, a caution to her playful smirk, and he sees it.

He ignores it.

“I’m pretty comfortable as it is,” he sits back onto the edge and pats the space beside him, “I do want to talk, though.”

Katara doesn’t say anything. She sits beside him without explaining, without clarifying, and that is all that matters. Her hands are at her sides, her hair is tumbling over her shoulders, and she looks so simple, so beautiful. There is space between the two of them, and she turns her body on an angle to face him.

“I have a fiancée,” he gathers his words in the hollow of his throat, tries to figure out how to navigate this conversation, “and you’re here on business. So what exactly…”

Katara’s hand slides up the center of his back, fingernails dragging material along his spine until they settle on the back of his neck. Her touch brings chills to his skin and her eyes are more chilling, tundra-blue and calculatingly cold.

“Honestly?” Her smile breaks bloody across her lips, red and vivid. “It’s nothing. I have no intention of stealing anyone’s fiancé, Prince Zuko.”

He is the one who leans into her touch and for once, she is offguard with wide eyes and pursed lips and shock brimming through her skin. When he kisses her, she melts into the familiar sensation, lingers even when he pulls away.

“Honestly?” He mirrors her, kisses her with a fragile tenderness. “I have no intention of belonging to anyone else.”


	4. —you think you're fooling me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i'll show you in spring, it's a treacherous thing. an interlude where she meets his family, and zuko realizes how deep he's fallen.

It’s hard for him to focus like this. Politics isn’t Zuko’s strong suit and having to face Katara in a professional setting in front of his entire, extended family seems to be on the bottom of the list of things he planned on doing with her over the course of her time here.

And yet here they are, lined up across the golden dais when the Chieftess of the Southern Water Tribe makes her entrance. The royalty she possesses is different than their own and he can see it in the way she carries herself. Zuko grew up with everything lacquered in gold and surrounded by lavish accommodations, but somehow, he suspects the royalty she knows is somewhere deep in her blood.

She is flanked on either side. Noriko, her advisor, is in perfect step with her, carrying an armful of bound papers with her; on her other side is a middle aged man whose hand seems to provide a constant pressure at the small of her back, his voice a low whisper in the silent room.

Zuko pretends it doesn’t bother him.

“What a pleasure,” she murmurs, her eyes scanning across the glimmering platform, a quick scan across him as if he is only part of the fanfare before she dips into a bow low enough to fold the knot of her hair over itself and towards the floor. Her small company of two follow suit, bowing deeply in mimicry. “A beautiful little dynasty you have built here.”

He can see her picking apart the broken pieces of their family: the way her eyes linger on Iroh’s hand gently kneading into his son’s shoulder, the delicate touch shared between his father and his mother that generates a nearly palpable affection, a hard focus on the ruby red line of Azula’s lips pursed together full of things to say.

And the way she looks at him renders him completely dream-like, unable to push any words to the edge of his lips. His uncle’s laugh cuts through the silence before he can blurt out anything foolish, and he steps down from the dais with a twinkling look in his eye, dragging Lu Ten behind him. Zuko finds the twinkle familiar, but can’t quite figure out what schemes his Uncle might be playing into.

“The pleasure is all mine, Master Katara,” Iroh returns the bow, albeit with a little less grace in his portly figure. Lu Ten bows steadily, his gaze fixed on her face throughout, and stands quietly by his father’s side. Zuko can’t help the burn of jealousy in his cheeks for being his father’s son and not his uncle’s, and missing out on all of the opportunities he’d have. It isn’t being a Prince that makes it worthwhile, but simply being able to contend with the likes of her.

Especially when her cheeks flood with color of their own, and her shoulders slip out of the regal posture she’d been holding. “Master?” Her brow quirks slightly, but a smile plays across her lips, and her hand crumples up against her hip.

It’s the first time that Zuko realizes she isn’t wearing the formal dresswear that he has grown accustomed to seeing, but something different. Her hair is still arranged in the same fashion, but she has on lighter material. Her top seems to have the sleeves cut off and dropped down to her waist, so that the simple blue band holds the material together and the light blue wrap across her chest is visible through the sides. Her pants are cut in a similar style to his own, loose around the thighs and tight against her calves, tucked into the dusty brown boots of a warrior.

She looks at home in her own skin. “I heard you are an expert in your element, are you not?” Iroh’s eyes are fixed on hers, squinting yet warm enough to crack a wider smile from her mouth.

“You heard right,” and she’s full-on grinning, white teeth glinting back at them, “Avatar Aang’s youngest teacher to date.” The admission shouldn’t shock Zuko, but he doesn’t really know much about her; this small fact is closer to her than he’s ever truly been, despite all of their run-ins since her arrival here.

“How lucky we are to have you in our midst,” Iroh says warmly, “I hope you have had a most pleasant time in the Fire Nation Capital so far. I apologize that I could not attend the initial dinner upon your arrival, but I hope to make it up to you soon.”

Noriko fidgets beside her, and Katara laughs. Her eyes flicker over to him, a fleeting move that leaves his mouth dry from the acknowledgement. “I look forward to it, your Highness. I have had plenty of entertainment in the meantime.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i didn't forget about this! i just lost my outline...and my motivation for a little bit. also sorry these were so short, everything else in this series is gonna be at least 1k from here on.


	5. —you're my temple, i get on my knees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we should have each other to tea. zuko realizes just how bad he is at following directions.

The tea room is silent when Zuko arrives, a slight surprise to him since it is occupied. From behind the thick curtains, he can discern the glimmer of the morning sun on the horizon as he slips his boots off neatly and leaves them at the threshold of the door. Having a small tea ceremony once a week was an idea facilitated by his uncle when they were kids—an idea that they were unable to escape in the formative years and now unable to break now that they were adults.

And honestly, Zuko didn’t mind at all. Lighting the incense on the table between them, he sits down opposite his sister and waits for her eyes to flicker open.

“Running late, Zuzu?” It is less of a question and more of a lazy reprimand on her behalf; Zuko watches her poke her nails between the spaces of her fingers absently, and notes the early bite of her sarcasm in the morning. All he has to offer in the way of apologies is a quiet murmur, one that she doesn’t acknowledge, and instead chooses to hold his gaze for a few moments.

It takes only a few seconds of her intent stare for him to avert his eyes and focus on arranging the teacups instead. The tea that Azula had taken care to brew prior to his arrival is still scalding hot, and the steam roils out of the teacups in plumes as he pours them for the two of them. 

“Would’ve been nice if Lu Ten could make it,” he muses as he contemplates taking the first sip. It doesn’t matter how much of a habit they have fallen into, because he is still the same eager boy—first to fall into the enticing aroma, first to burn the taste off of his tongue and spend the rest of the morning sulking. Still so quick to act and slow to think.

Azula’s eyes roll so rapidly that Zuko nearly flinches at the implication, and she leans into the table with a displeased frown on her lips. “He’s far too busy trying to charm his way into good favor with that waterbending master, so I’m not shocked.”

The picture it paints in Zuko’s head is enough to boil his tea all over again; Lu Ten, who presents a perfect match for Katara, with a strong arm around her waist and a wild whisper in her ear.

For a split second, Zuko pictures her face twisted in pleasure, backed up against the palace doors, and heat swims into his vision for long enough to threaten to ruin his morning. It isn’t a change in behavior that goes unnoticed by his sister, who simply sighs and raises her teacup to her lips. 

“Don’t get hurt, stupid,” her words are meant to come out in a snarl, the way Azula always means every word of warning to be executed, but there is a soft hinge in her throat, and it almost sounds as if she is warning him in the aftermath of his feelings being hurt. Zuko knows this, but knows Azula would never go as far as to express what she would refer to as ‘unnecessary weakness’ towards him, knows it is the closest to concern he will ever get.

He thinks maybe there is more than an inkling of warning in her words, but thinks he may just throw caution to the wind.

Zuko doesn’t realize he’s searching for her until he sees her outside of her room, a stern furrow between her brows as she talks to Noriko. He doesn’t realize his presence is known until she catches sight of him and sends Noriko away, closes the space between them with a worried hand on his shoulder.

“Hey,” her voice is low static in his head, “are you all right? You look—”

It takes a split second for Zuko to catch her hand in his and press her back into the door of the room with enough force to jar the rest of the words from her mouth. He can feel her pulse in the center of his palms and it seems to tap into the arrhythmia of his thoughts for long enough to clear the haze behind his eyes. Katara glances at him for a few moments before her free hand twists the door open behind them, and Zuko walks them backwards into her room with a powerful step, leading a powerful dance.

He doesn’t find the edge of her bed immediately. His hand crawls up to grasp the slim curve of her chin and he tilts her head up, exposes the smooth line of her throat. “No interruptions,” he says and waits for the repeated promise with his face tilted towards her. Zuko presses leverage onto her with his leg split between her thighs, and the sudden flux of heat against his skin sends his hormones through the roof.

“None.” Her voice is thick with want, but weak enough to sound as though she is already begging for relief. His mouth touches hers in a way that makes Zuko feel ravenous, in a way that leaves him searing the taste of her lips into his memory. Katara hooks one of her legs around his waist and it is all of the pressure he needs to collapse into her, with his mouth sliding into the curve of her neck and his hands searching for her skin.

Zuko can’t quite place what it is that has swallowed him up so wholly; whether or not it is Katara or his jealousy or his selfishness or the need to drown out the possibility that he cannot have something that he wants is still unclear. But the heavy moans that Katara offers into his ears with each new canvas of skin touched by his sun-blessed hands is enough to keep his mind off of the true motive of the matter. Her hips are so deeply flexed into his that each movement draws a reaction from her, until she is swiveling her hips and her eyes are asking for mercy, and Zuko feels the plea in the back of her throat when he kisses her.

He thinks he is broken, already, but Katara slips layers of clothing off between them until they are almost bare, almost satisfied at the thought of all of her readily at his touch. Zuko’s breath catches when his hand feels its way between her thighs and she coils herself into his arms, her back arched into him, and her head thrown to the side.

“Please,” is all she has to say, “I need you.”

Zuko thinks that it is far, far too late for a warning.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [citrine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1938870) by [iRockYourSocks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iRockYourSocks/pseuds/iRockYourSocks)




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